Patricia Kerr Karasov, a former Hennepin County district judge who was suspended without pay in 2011 and who later retired from the bench, sued a group of law enforcement agencies and others on Tuesday, claiming her driver’s license records were searched in violation of state law.

Karasov becomes the latest in a series of prominent people, but apparently the first who was a Minnesota judge, to file suit in federal court, claiming their privacy was violated over the license lookups.

Some cases have been settled, some thrown out by the federal court and others have been allowed to continue, with the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals likely to determine whether litigants such as Karasov will ultimately be successful.

Karasov was censured and suspended without pay in 2011 by the Minnesota Supreme Court over questions about the validity of decisions she made in cases while living outside her judicial district, including that of a man convicted of attempted murder. She did not seek re-election in 2012.

Among the entities named in her suit are the cities of Minneapolis, St. Paul, Burnsville, Eden Prairie and Maple Grove, as well as Hennepin, Ramsey, Freeborn, Stearns, Steele, Mille Lacs and Rice counties.

She is being represented by the Sapientia Law Group, which has filed most of the suits in the look up cases.

The mayor of a traditionally liberal Wisconsin city has ordered the removal of a cemetery's monuments to Confederate soldiers, saying the Civil War was "a defense of the deplorable practice of slavery" and "an act of insurrection and treason."